


we're gonna die young

by isawet



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Bonding, Team as Family, no proofreading we edit like straight men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 16:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18347648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: Here’s the thing about Ranger superpowers: they heal quick and they’re strong and they’re fast and everything is just a little bit muted, just a little bit less than it used to be. Kim still snaps pencils on the regular, when she’s frustrated and not paying enough attention. Food tastes blander, sensations are duller, the shower never feels as hot as it used to.After the dust settles, Kim is having trouble readjusting to life in Angel Grove.





	we're gonna die young

**Author's Note:**

> guess what this isn't?? PROOFREAD. So I'm sure there are many typos and other careless or jarring errors and I apologize in advance. I will fix them as I become aware of them :)
> 
> Also, re: the tags. The self/harm ptsd stuff is pretty light and not at all graphic, but I tagged just to make sure I'm not accidentally triggering someone. Please be cautious if you are sensitive to those triggers. In addition to those, there is a death of a minor character (Zack's mom, also non-graphically) please skip if that's going to negatively impact your emotional or mental health.

Kim remembers: she’s thirteen and she’s stolen her cousin’s bike. It’s blue and black and they told her it was a boy’s bike. Told her she was too small then laughed when they made a tampon joke and it made her go red. The hill behind her uncle’s house is too steep for her to ride up and she walks instead, one sweaty palm on the plasticky seat and the other wrapped around the rubber grip of the handlebar. Makes it to the top with her legs burning and her chest heaving and the summer sun beats down relentless, making her hairline prickle and her spine dampen against the thin cotton of her shirt. The metal of the frame stings her bare calf when she slings one leg over to straddle the bike; the tip of the seat pokes her back. 

She knows she fell. Broke her ankle and skinned her knees up terrible and the first thing her mother did when she ran out of the house screaming was slap her upside the head before she called the ambulance.

But she what _remembers_ : cresting the hill and the wind in her hair and the world dropping away, the horizon in the distance. Doesn’t know what the feeling in her chest is but she’s alight with it: the glow, the buzz, the yawning exciting uncertainty of everything. All her potential and a billion futures branching out before her; she’s thirteen with the world at her feet and she’s going to live forever.

++

Kim has her hands braced on the table and her shoulder is tingling. It’s almost pleasant, except for the knowledge that it’s a needle is moving through her skin. She imagines the thread, slowly going taut, the stitches appearing in neat black lines. Alpha is still talking about nothing and he buzzes twice before chirping and trilling that she’s done.

Kim shrugs on her shirt, rolling her shoulder and testing her range of motion. Her footsteps echo as she walks through the ship, the soles of her shoes on the metal grating and the odd blue cast of everything being underwater; sounds are slightly dampened, an eerie hollow ring to every scuff and clang. 

Zack is sitting in the pit with his back to the ship’s door--his posture makes her pause. He’s slumped in on himself, head dangling between his propped up knees and his hands limp in the dust. Trini is crouched next to him, head leaned close and her murmur too low and soft for Kim to make out. It’s so clearly a private moment that Kim hesitates.

Trini looks up and sees her. “His mom,” is all she says, quiet, and Kim crosses the distance to crouch at his other side. He doesn’t look at either of them but his weight leans against Kim’s shoulder, pressing and desperate and that hitch in his breath--struggling for every inhale and almost losing every time.

 

They drop him home in Kim’s car, her beat up shit sedan instead of the new car her parents had promised her before… everything. As punishments go, she’s still a teenager with a car, so none of them are really complaining. The back doors don’t work so they have to crawl through the front, but they’ve got super powers, it’s not so hard.

Jason and his dad are working on fixing up that truck sometimes on weeknights they can use Billy’s mom’s van, so they’re mobile enough. Kim aims the car for Trini’s house, drumming her fingers on the wheel and frowning. “Do you want to come over?”

Trini turns from where she’d been looking out the window, head tilted. “Do you want me to?”

There’s the thing about Trini, and she had it before they dug magical coins out of an asteroid crater: she never says anything Kim is prepared to respond to. 

“I…” she trails off, keeping her eyes on the road, on her hands on the wheel. The streetlamps go by, yellow rectangles of light running across the dashboard, her fingers. “I’m not sure.”

In her peripheral vision, Trini nods thoughtfully.

 

Kim slows to a stop at the curb outside Trini’s house. “Well,” she says, trying for a smile to plaster over the awkward air between them. “I’ll see you--”

Trini puts her hand over Kim’s, on the gearshift. She pushes it into park, then reaches over and turns the engine off, yanking the keys out of the ignition and twirling them once around her index finger. “C’mon.” She doesn’t wait for Kim to respond, climbing out of the car. 

Kim blinks. Trini’s door slams shut and the noise stirs her into action. “Hold on,” she says, catching up to Trini right outside the front door. “Hold--hello, Mrs.--”

“We’re going to my room,” Trini says sharply, cutting her off. “We doing homework, we don’t need snacks, she’s not my girlfriend.”

She drags Kim down the hall. “I could use a snack,” Kim comments, getting her feet under her and tugging her elbow from Trini’s grasp. Trini leads her into a room, then shuts and locks the door behind her. “Are we really doing homework?”

“No.” Trini points at the floor by the wall, where there’s a small blue rug. “Sit.”

Kim sits, her elbows propped on her thighs. “I think this might be a kidnapping.”

Trini rolls her eyes. Then she sits, cross-legged. When Kim shifts her position to mirror her, their knees touch. Trini reaches for her hand, then hesitates. A very faint flush rises in her cheeks, almost impossible to see. Kim closes the last bit of distance between them, and Trini’s lips twitch like she’s considering a smile. She presses her thumb against the inside of Kim’s wrist, and nudges her until Kim mirrors that position too, Trini’s pulse thumping steadily against her fingertip. 

“Match me,” Trini says, and inhales, slow. 

Kim copies her, feeling her chest rise, her ribcage expand. They hold the breath, for a long while, until Kim can feel her heartbeat, until her stomach starts to ache. When Trini exhales Kim lets the breath out all at once. Trini leans closer, her palm warm on Kim’s sternum. “Match me,” she repeats, and they try again. This time Kim counts, exhales slow, counts again. 

“Hold on,” Trini says, after a minute. Kim’s eyes have fluttered closed by then and she keeps them that way, counting in her head and listening to the quiet sounds of Trini retrieving something and sitting back down. “Okay. It’s about to get loud.”

Kim opens her eyes. “What?” she says, but she doesn't hear her own voice. Trini has settled headphones over her ears, and the music is too loud for her to hear anything at all. She can see Trini’s lips moving, and the curl of hair fallen into her eyes. The music isn’t something Kim recognizes, but it’s loud and it’s angry and it’s every mean thing Kim’s ever done and every vicious thought she’s ever had and Trini’s hand is over her heart, steadying, and her lips are moving again, counting. 

Kim closes her eyes. Doesn’t think about a thing except the press of Trini’s palm on the thin cotton of her shirt and the memory of what her hand felt like, the thin bones of her wrist and the softness of her skin and the steady flutter of her pulse. 

When Trini lifts the headphones away Kim’s head is clear. She can hear Trini’s brothers in the next room through the wall, the muted babble of their voices; she can hear the noise of the carpet against her jeans when she unfolds her legs. When she opens her eyes the colors are brighter. Trini is watching her, eyes dark and cautious. 

Kim smiles. It’s slow, a tipping of her lips that grows like a flower under the sun; quiet and fragile. 

Trini smiles back.

++

It’s Zack’s fault.

They were training, practicing covering each other’s flank, and he got distracted by his own enemy, pulled away. Kim doesn’t see it coming but she sure does feel the bone in her face shift, and the pain is a lightning bolt, a lance of agony directly on her exposed nerves. She staggers into the wall, gasping, her fingers scrabbling at the rock. 

Jason is at her side within seconds, his hands careful but insistent on her jaw, tipping her face up so he can check the damage, Billy scampering off for Alpha and medical assistance. Zack is hovering above Jason’s shoulder, anxious and worried and trying to hide it behind a joke about not looking so hot for the spring formal. Trini goes up on her tiptoes to smack him upside the back of the head. 

 

It’s not until later, she thinks: hm. 

Here’s the thing about Ranger superpowers: they heal quick and they’re strong and they’re fast and everything is just a little bit muted, just a little bit less than it used to be. Kim still snaps pencils on the regular, when she’s frustrated and not paying as much attention as she needs to. Food tastes blander, sensations are duller, the shower never feels as hot as it used to. 

That elbow though, with all the coin’s strength behind it, the faint crack it made when it hit her face, the way it punched a noise straight out of her chest. Nothing’s ever felt so clear.

It’s, she thinks, when Alpha’s done running some kind of scanner over her skin> It’s just something to keep in mind.

 

Zack is waiting for her outside the infirmary, feeling guilty but trying to appear cocky. The end result leaves him looking constipated. “Ready to admit I’m better than you?” His eyes fixate on the bruise rising on her cheek, from just under her eye to the bottom of her jawbone; he swallows hard. 

“Ready to admit you need a miralax?”

His expression morphs into confusion. “What?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it.” Kim walks past him, headed for the exit, and he trots to keep up with her. “Maybe add more fiber in your diet before choosing a supplement.”

Zack slings an arm around her shoulders. “Sure,” he says, even though he’s got no clue what she’s talking about. This must be how he gets along so well with Trini. “Do you wanna get something to eat?”

It’s definitely how he gets along so well with Trini. “I could eat,” Kim says. 

They go to a taco truck in a bar parking lot. “Don’t ask me how I know it,” Zack says cheerfully. When he tries to pay for her burrito she kicks him in the back of the knee, making him fall over. Then she pays for them both. Zack bounces back to his feet and they loiter, waiting for their food and scuffing the loose gravel with their sneakers. 

“Do you,” Kim starts, and realizes halfway through that it might be insensitive, but she’s already started and he’s looking at her like he expects her to finish so she grits her teeth and keeps going. “Do you want to get something to bring home for your mom?”

Instead of getting guarded or defensive, his body posture eases, his smile going from calculated to genuine. “Nah. I always make her something to eat before I leave for training. She goes to bed real early.”

“Okay.” 

Their food comes and they retreat to the trunk of Kim’s car, climbing up to sit with their legs dangling. “Hold on,” Zack says, when Kim goes to take a bite. “What are you doing?”

Kim looks at her burrito. She looks at Zack. “I don’t understand the question.”

Zack fumbles in his pocket. He retrieves a bottle of hot sauce in a label she can’t read, the Chinese characters worn away from--being in his pocket while he swam around in the Ranger ship, probably. “Here.”

She holds her burrito out and he dumps a healthy amount onto the tortilla. When she bites down she can feel it, little hooks into her tongue and the bite of the peppers, the sting of the vinegar. When she’s swallows she’s smiling. 

“Yeah,” he says, beaming at her through his own mouthful. “I’m forgiven.”

They pass the hot sauce back and forth, until it’s gone. 

 

She drops him home. Before he climbs out of the car he looks like he might apologize again so she leans over and kisses him lightly on the cheek. The last time she kissed a boy she’d been making out in the backseat of a car and she’d left lipstick stains on his jaw. The only mark tonight is a little bit of grease on his skin. She wipes it away with her thumb. “Text me the name of that stuff.”

“You got it.” Then he licks his finger and sticks it into her ear, laughing while he escapes her retaliatory punch.

 

When she wakes up, the bruise on her cheek is gone. She looks at her face, sleep puffed eyes and the slope of her jaw, the dark mark above her lip. And her skin, smooth and light and unbruised. She looks at it for a long time.

 

There’s a map on her bedroom wall, with little pins stuck in it. All the places she’s desperate to be instead of in Angel Grove, her wanderlust so sharp she can taste it, the burning in her chest to get out and stay out and never ever come back. Cities circled in black marker and dash marks of possible routes. 

She rips it off the wall with her fingernails. Tears it into pieces and leaves it on the floor, the thumbtacks flying away and bouncing on the carpet. When she steps on one the metal breaks against the sole of her foot.

++

Kim ditches second period and climbs under the bleachers of the baseball field. It’s dark underneath, a respite from the sun hanging high in the sky, and it smells like dirt and grass. 

Trini is leaning against the aluminum bleacher supports, watching Kim watch her. “Ditching?” Trini makes a disapproving clicking noise with her tongue. “Whatever will Jason say?”

“Jason has a criminal record,” Kim points out. 

Trini shrugs. “So do you.”

Kim flinches. She walks over and leans just the same way Trini is leaning, arms dangling, elbows propped. When Trini shifts her weight Kim does it just the same.

“Mature,” Trini scoffs, but she looks like she’s thinking about smiling. The sun is coming through the bleachers in rectangles through the slats, highlighting Trini’s eyes and the hollow of her throat. There are fine scars there, where Rita cut her that night. They’re fading more every day and Kim can only pick them out now because she knows they’re there.

Trini catches her looking. “Alpha thinks it’s because it was done by someone with a coin.” She touches the longest one with a single fingertip, tracing up the column of her throat. “Doesn’t heal as fast.”

Kim’s mouth has gone dry. “Do you,” she starts. Falters. Pushes through it anyway. “Do you wanna get out of here?”

Trini drums her fingers on the bleacher seat above her head, rattling it to the nervous thundering of Kim’s heart. “Always.”

 

Kim takes Trini to the train tracks on the edge of town. “When I was a kid,” she says, and Trini laughs, her head tipped back. Kim rolls her eyes. “When I was a _little_ kid, my dad used to bring me here to watch the trains.”

Trini balances on one of the tracks, arms held out. She rocks up on her tiptoes, then one foot, the other bent in front of her. She hardly wobbles. “Did you like it?”

“It was… super boring. So boring, you can’t even understand. There is not one single interesting thing about watching trains.”

Trini laughs again. Twice in five minutes, it’s a record Kim keeps soft and warm within her chest. 

“You know you’re not supposed to talk while you’re watching trains? What’s the point of that?”

Trini snorts. She extends her hand out and when Kim takes it neither of them let go. They walk along the rails, balanced on the balls of their feet and their arms stretched across the tracks. “You talk too much anyway.” Trini’s tone is lighter than Kim thinks maybe she meant it to be, but when she shoots a little look at her Trini just shrugs. 

“What should I do right now,” Kim wonders, watching Trini out of the corner of her eye. “If not talk?”

Trini’s lashes are long and dark and they sweep against her cheek when she blinks. Her grip is firm on Kim’s hand, and they turn to face each other, Kim’s other hand sliding up Trini’s arm to curl around her elbow and pull her closer, off balance. 

“Do you hear that?” Trini asks.

Kim tilts her head into the breeze. She can hear it, a rumble in the near distance. “Do you feel it?” The rumble under their feet. 

Trini braces her hand against Kim’s shoulder, her stance settling. It gets louder and louder, the tracks rattling, the horn blowing. The train barreling down towards them.

Trini hauls them away, landing sideways with a thump that clacks Kim’s teeth together. The train rips by, the force of the wind blowing their up around their faces. They’re very close together; their legs are tangled. Kim leans closer, her lips brushing the curve of Trini’s ear. “Do you think we could stop it? If we morphed?” She’s yelling to be heard above the noise and she wants to try it, wants to wake up the galaxy in her chest and see if she’s stronger than a locomotive. 

Trini scrabbles for a grip, her hand slipping off Kim’s shoulder and landing in her hair. She twists, grabbing a handful and holding it so tight it stings Kim’s scalp. Their eyes lock, Kim’s breath hitches. Trini shifts her hand and Kim feels the tension leech away, out of her body and soaking into the dirt beneath her. She quiets, matching her breathing to Trini and relaxing her muscles and never once, not even for a second, looking away.

 

After the last sound has faded into the distance, Trini untangles herself, standing up. When Kim stands her feet wobble. “Trini?” she asks, and her voice cracks in the middle, sounding young and uncertain.

Trini is looking out into the mountains, the cloudless bullet blue sky. “Take me home,” she says, and they don’t speak the whole way there.

 

Kim’s sleeping when the buzzing of her phone wakes her. It’s a call from Jason, not a text, and she fumbles at the screen to pick up, her voice thick with sleep. “H’lo?”

“It’s me,” Jason says unnecessarily. Then he stops. She can hear him swallow.

Kim sits up, letting her comforter fall and shivering. It’s half past two in the morning. “Jason?”

“It’s Zack,” Jason says. “His mom just died.”

++

Jason and Billy are handling arrangements. Trini is handling Zack.

Kim finds cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink and a few cardboard boxes in the hallway and starts goes to work. 

By the time Trini comes to check on her, she’s stripped the bed, packed up all the medical shit, cleaned all the windows and the dishes, and filled three garbage bags. Personal effects she’s carefully left on the bed or the dressers, untouched for Zack to sort through. Bills are stacked neatly on a table in the kitchen; the door to Zack’s room remains closed and undisturbed.

Trini looks around, nods once. Then she jerks her head towards the backyard. Kim follows her out, the screen door squeaking and rattling when it slams shut behind them. Zack is sitting in a rusted out lawn chair, staring at his hands. “I’m going to get food,” Trini informs them both. Then she leaves. Kim hears her own car start up, and the crunch of the tires on gravel as it drives away. She didn’t even feel Trini take her keys. 

Kim coughs. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Zack says, flat. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Sure I did.” Kim searches for something to say. Then she searches for another chair. There isn’t one. She sticks her hands in her pockets and rocks back and forth on her feet. “Do you…” she gropes for something, anything. “... wanna watch TV?”

Zack blinks. He looks up at her for the first time. “Yeah, okay.”

They make it halfway down the hallway before Zack’s footsteps falter. Kim curses herself internally and turns them around, depositing Zack on the living room sofa before going into his mother’s room and unplugging the television, hauling it out into the living room. She pushes the table up against the wall and mutters to herself, crawling around on her hands and knees on the dusty floor to get everything plugged in. 

She forgot the remote so she pushes the button on the front and then sits on the sofa next to him, a foot of distance between them. On the television, a jingle for car insurance blares out, jarring and incongruously jaunty. 

They stare at the screen. Zack’s eyes are glassy and wet and every so often his breath hitches. The commercials finally end and a talk show comes on, something about health and dieting and if wearing spanx on the first date is a good idea. 

“Do you,” Kim starts, and then stops again.

Zack doesn’t look at her. “Do I what?”

“Do you think we could stop a moving train?”

Zack blinks. He turns his head. He smiles. It’s tiny and it’s not quite right but it’s there. He relaxes into the sofa, sliding closer to her. “Yeah. Totally.”

Kim nods. She copies his posture, tipping her head onto the back of the sofa and staring at the water stains in the ceiling. “What do you think can kill a Ranger?”

Zack thinks about it for so long the show goes to commercial again. Then he laughs, cracking and sad and ugly. “Rita. Maybe drowning.”

Kim stares at the ceiling so long her eyes start to burn. She remembers holding her breath until her stomach hurt and her chest spasmed, she remembers the heat as her zord crumpled around her. 

“Zack?”

“Yeah?”

She reaches across the space between them, palm turned up. On the television, the insurance jingle is playing again, repetitive and upbeat and jarring. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

Zack’s palm dwarfs her own. His grip is so tight it hurts. “Thanks.”

 

He’s asleep against her shoulder when Trini gets back. Kim holds a finger to her lips and Trini nods, quietly setting down three brown paper bags that smell like fast food. Kim raises an eyebrow at her. 

Trini shrugs. “I panicked,” she whispers, settling onto the floor with her back against Kim’s legs. “Billy and Jason are on their way anyway.”

Kim touches one of Trini’s braids at her temple, messy and jagged and missing her usual care. Trini tips her head back into the touch, leaning her cheek against the inside of Kim’s knee. Kim trails her fingers through Trini’s hair, slow and feather light at first, and then more sure, steadier. Trini exhales, her eyes fluttering shut. 

“I hate this fucking commercial,” she mutters. 

“Yeah,” Kim says, “me too.”

++

Kim’s never been so tired. It’s an exhaustion she can taste, sharp and nothing she’s ever felt before, not even cheer bootcamp the time she got up at five in the morning to run until she threw up. The halls at school feel oppressive and she dreams of touching Billy’s still chest and his lax face and how she knows now what deadweight really feels like.

“Guys,” Zack says, on one of the days they’re poking around the ship and Jason is arguing with Zordon in the main room. “There’s a fucking sauna on this bitch.”

Kim and Trini share a look. It’s the most excited he’s sounded in days. They drag themselves upright from where they’re draped on the metal grating and follow him through the twists and turns. It is a sauna, oddly enough, and Zack strips down to his boxers lightning fast while Billy announces he’s taking a hard pass. “I hate sweating,” he mutters, and heads back towards Jason.

Kim looks at Trini. Trini looks at Zack, the challenging arch of his eyebrow. It’s been awhile since he looked at anybody like that. Trini’s face sets.

Kim sighs and tugs her shirt over her head, kicking off her shoes and going on one foot and then other to strip her socks off, Trini mirroring her.

The door hisses open and shut behind them and Zack almost melts into the bench. “Ooohh,” he sighs, stretching out and letting his hands dangle. His eyes flutter shut. Trini kicks him in the bottom of his bare foot. “Don’t fall asleep.” He flips her off without opening his eyes. 

Kim sits against the wall, enjoying the last cool flush of the metal on her skin before it starts to heat up, her hairline prickling sweat. “I’ve never been in a sauna before,” she murmurs. 

Trini lists against her side. “Mm,” she agrees. Kim looks down at her. There are paper thin lines across the bottom left of her throat, fading more everyday, where Rita raked her claws across her skin while she was alone in the dark. Their shoulders slide against each other, sweat slick. Kim can see the dip between Trini’s breasts, the way her skin lightens across her chest and the small taper of her belly. She’s so small like this, peaceful and calm in the hiss of the steam, her hair frizzing and curling in the humidity. It’s hard to remember she’s small when she’s armored up in her suit and throwing her body through solid rock by the force of her will and her rage. 

Their fingers touch, slippery and burning warm. Kim looks at the way they fit together, the contrast of their skin, the corded hidden strength that hums in their muscles.

 

Stepping out into hall is a shock, the air so relatively cold her lungs ache with the first inhale. It’s the most cleansed Kim has every felt, even with the ends of her hair dripping and the start of a dehydration headache thumping in her temples. She stretches up onto her tiptoes, then bends at the waist and places her palms flat on the floor, enjoying the satisfying pull of well used muscles, and the three of them sort of look at each other and shrug before ambling mostly naked back to the front, where Zack breaks away with a twitch of his fingers farewell and quietly muttered _thanks_.

Kim carries her clothes to the entrance and lets them flutter to the rocky ground, the thump thump of her shoes bouncing. Goosebumps rise on her skin. 

“You’re being weird,” Trini says, slightly behind her and to the left. It’s blunt and so like her Kim’s lips curl before she looks back over her shoulder. 

“Am I?” Her tone is low and smooth and she lets her eyelashes flutter just so and she sees Trini parse it, the confusion and the twitch of her eyebrow. It would work on Jason, Kim thinks, but Trini just sets her jaw and steps closer.

“Yes.”

Kim launches herself into the water, cool and bursting fresh. She floats and lets her hair tangle out in soft waves, legs barely moving. She feels the rush of the water moving and hears the muffled impact and Trini comes up alongside her, her fingers firm on Kim’s wrist as she turns her. 

Their kiss is all bubbles. Open eyes in the blue blue blue of the water and how it casts warped ripples across their body. The way the sun just barely makes it through the depths of the canyon and how their hair floats up around their faces. When Kim was five she wanted to be a mermaid, in her pink water wings at the free swim lessons down at the community center pool and she can feel it now, that magic hum, the way her body knows how to keep her suspended just there, Trini’s tongue between her teeth.

She wants to bite down. Wants to taste the pennies of Trini’s blood and have it drip down her chin and she wants to see Trini’s eyes light up with fury and feel Trini’s nails rip through her jugular. She pulls away from the kiss and kicks her feet and propels herself up, breaking the surface with a gasp. Drags herself onto the rocky outcrop on the craggly pebbles and the scratchy crabgrass and presses her palms into her eye sockets. When she exhales and sits up Trini is standing there, dressed with her hair dripping, holding a wet bundle. Kim freezes. 

Trini stops just short of her, just a foot away. “Your clothes.” She drops them, wet flop squelch on the ground. She hesitates. Reaches out and crouches and just barely touches Kim’s knee with the damp tips of her fingers. “I’m here. When you figure it out, I’ll still be here.”

//

Someone put up pictures of Amanda inside the trophy case. _The_ pictures. It says _slut_ in surprisingly neat cursive on the glass, scarlet red lipstick. There’s a mocking _A_ across her bare chest in the largest photo--the juniors are reading Hawthorne this year. 

Kim looks at what she’s caused, held up by scotch tape and next to the jersey with Jason’s name on it. There’s a smear of rust red on the sleeve from last year’s championship game, evidence of the sweat and tears and blood he puts into his teams. 

Trini arrives at her shoulder. “Hey.”

Kim pulls her sleeve over her palm, her eyes pricking. “Help me,” she asks, quiet and low. “Please.”

Trini is silent. Her presence fades for a moment, then returns, while Kim is smearing lipstick all over the glass, staining her jacket sleeve muddy dark red. She pulls Kim hand away from where it’s scrubbing frantic, her skin squeaking against the hard surface, the friction a low burn nowhere near as painful as Kim deserves. 

“Here,” is all Trini says, and holds up the roll of paper towels she’s brought back, the spray cleaner. They scrub the graffiti away and then Kim keeps watch while Trini rips the lock off the case door, the force great enough to snap the handle and bend the hinge, then reaches inside and removes the ruined photo.

She hands it Kim as they scuttle away before they can be caught and Kim carries it inside her jacket, the scarlet letter above her heart.

++

Of the lot of them, Trini is the best fighter one-on-one. Jason, in one of his post-training blackboard talks that reminded them all how much of a jock he’s always been, mused once that they’re all training memories into their muscles, but Trini’s got the best natural instincts and it’s coming faster and easier to her. 

Then he lectures her about complacency until her fingers curl thoughtfully around her ballpoint pen and Kim hastily drags Jason away to look at the scheduling for the following week and to discuss just how long they’re going to let Zack sleep in that empty house or the Ranger ship before dragging him to one of their houses for a real meal and a long hot shower. 

Anyway. Of the lot of them, Trini is the best fighter.

 

Drowning, Kim thinks, has gotta have a lotta crossover with suffocation. Been there, done that.

 

They haven’t had a real fight in weeks and Kim can see the way it makes Trini twitchy, makes her hit harder, makes her eyes flash. They’re in the pits and they’re sparring and Trini’s launching a punch at her ribs and Kim has a flash of memory:

_Alpha thinks it’s because someone with a coin did it. Takes longer to heal_

She drops her block. 

It hits her like the train they watched together; Kim can feel her ribs snap. She drops like a stone, and the entire world whites out around her, the breath stolen from her lungs and the involuntary noise she lets out. All there is is the agony in her side and the blood rushing in her ears. 

“--imberly!” Someone is dragging her, her feet knocking on the ground as they lift her up. The air around them changes to something sharper, more sterile: they’re in the ship. She’s experiencing the world in fits and starts, one minute looking up at Jason’s frowning face and the next seeing Alpha’s dome above her as he whizzes around, hands waving. Someone’s saying her name again, more urgently. 

Hands touch her ribs and she shouts, wordless, arching up. Other hands hold her down and when the blackness creeps around the edges of her vision she slips into it with a sigh of relief.

 

Waking up sucks. Her tongue feels too big in her mouth and her eyes so gritty it’s hard to force them open, blinking blearily in an attempt to focus her vision. Her torso is one big ache. She’s lying in an infirmary bed. 

“Hello,” Billy says, like they’ve just run into each other at the grocery store. “Are you in pain?”

“Yes,” Kim croaks.

Billy sets his book down, sitting at her bedside in what looks suspiciously like the shitty lawn chair from Zack’s backyard. He starts to stand. “I can give you--”

“No.”

He sits. “The others went home to sleep,” he tells her. “My mom thinks I’m at Jason’s house, your folks think you’re at Trini’s house.”

Kim nods. The action exhausts her. They’re both silent for a few long minutes, until Kim has started to drift again. 

“Do you,” Billy says, too loud into the silence. “Want me to hold your hand?”

Kim forces her eyes open to look at him. “Do you want to hold my hand?”

“No,” Billy says immediately. Then he frowns. “But if you want me to, I--I can do that.”

Kim holds up one hand, her arm trembling with the effort. She curls her fingers into a fist. Billy bumps their knuckles together, smiling, and settles back into his chair. He reads to her until she falls asleep.

 

Waking up the second time is less painful, but marginally so. Billy and the chair are gone and Trini is standing there, holding a syringe.

“Ominous,” Kim mumbles. She twitches her fingers, then her toes. Already feeling less like death, although still very much in pain. She thinks she’ll hit the perfect medium in a few hours. Or at least she does until Trini leans over and empties the syringe into her IV.

It’s immediate, which means it’s the good alien painkiller Alpha usually keeps locked up. “What--” Kim starts, pissed, but Trini doesn’t let her finish.

“You don’t,” she says, very softly and almost shaking with rage, “get to use me to do that to yourself.”

“Trini,” Kim tries, but she’s already turned away and Kim can feel it, dragging at the edges of her consciousness. She slurs something as she slips away again, maybe a denial or maybe a confession, but it’s too garbled for either of them to understand. 

++

One week and two mended ribs later and Trini still won’t look directly at her. 

“Trini,” Kim tries, in the hallway at school. 

Trini walks by her like she doesn’t exist. Two girls gossiping at a locker nearby smile viciously in Kim’s direction, raising the volume of their vitriol so Kim’s sure not to miss that it’s aimed at her. 

Trini comes back around the corner, reaches over, and breaks the combination lock clean off the locker. “Oops,” she says, deadpan as the girls gape at her, and then opens her hand, letting the fragments of metal fall to the floor before leaving. She doesn’t once acknowledge Kim’s existence. 

 

Kim crawls through Jason’s window at three in the morning and wakes him with a hand pressed over his mouth. He licks her in retaliation. 

“Gross,” she whispers, and wipes his own spit on his cheek. Then she sits on the edge of his bed, sighing. 

Jason slips closer, shirtless and shivery without his comforter wrapped around him. Even so, he’s all warmth when he wraps an arm around her and she leans her head on his solid shoulder. 

“I didn't mean it,” Kim says quietly.

Jason sighs. “Zach says you asked him about dying.”

Kim jolts. “That was--”

“Trini says you talked about stepping in front of a train.”

“They misunderstood,” Kim argues weakly. “That’s not--I don’t want to die.”

Pressed this close, Kim can tell Jason is holding his breath. “You don’t?”

Kim thinks about---her mother’s blueberry pancakes and the map that used to be on her wall, all her old friends and her old plans and the guilt weighing heavy on her conscience. Billy sitting at her bedside and the way Trini laughs, how they all slept in Zack’s living room the first three nights after and pretended they couldn’t hear him crying one room over, the way Jason’s laugh will crack right in the middle when it’s so genuine he’s bursting with the joy of it, Billy’s deadweight in their arms on the long walk back to the ship.

“No,” she says. “I don’t want to die. I don’t know what I want.”

Jason exhales, all at once. He’d been holding it, just like her. “I can’t do this without you.”

She puts a hand at the back of his neck, scraping her fingers soothingly through the short hair. “You won’t have to.”

They break the embrace, each wiping surreptitiously at their eyes, and Kim starts to crawl back out the window. “Hey,” Jason says, when she’s got one leg out and one leg in. “Do you know anything about the rumor that Trini is on steroids?”

“Absolutely no idea,” Kim tells him, and vanishes into the night. 

 

“We’re not training today,” Kim announces, when she enters the training room in civvies and everyone stares at her, even Trini. 

“We’re… not?” Billy looks at Jason, confused. “We’re not?”

Jason frowns. “I thought your ribs were better.”

“My ribs are fine. We’re going up into the quarry pit, the dry one.”

Kim is avoiding looking at Trini, but she can feel Trini looking at her. The silence drags on too long and Kim bites her lip, suddenly hesitant. She’s about to say to forget the whole damn thing when Trini speaks up.

“We’re going to the quarry pit,” she says, in a tone that won’t be questioned. “Lead the way.”

“Okay,” Kim says, and she does.

 

They play football. Trini and Kim vs Jason and Zack, with a brief but intense custody fight over Billy, who finally agrees to have it be Boys vs Girls. Jason makes his side huddle up, arms around shoulders and butts stuck out. 

Kim and Trini lounge against the quarry wall. “When do you think they’ll realize we don’t have a football?”

Kim shrugs. “I honestly didn’t think it would take this long.”

“Boys,” Trini says, her disgust tinged with fondness. 

“Am I forgiven?”

Trini frowns, flicking a finger against her own wrist. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” 

“Break,” Jason shouts, clapping his hands together. The three of them march to a completely arbitrary line of scrimmage and crouch in some kind of formation. 

Trini sighs. “We didn’t even designate endzones.”

“It’ll make them feel better,” Kim muses, as they start to amble over. 

Trini cuts her eyes to Kim. “What makes you feel better?”

“I don’t know,” Kim admits. “I’m working on it.”

They draw even with the boys. Trini touches Kim’s wrist, quick and fleeting. Her fingertips are warm and her smile is warmer; Kim returns it, hesitant and then beaming. 

“Hold on,” Jason says, straightening with his hand on his hip and a suspicious squint to his eyes. “Where’s the football?”

 

They use Billy’s shoes, tied together by the laces. Neither team wins. 

++

Kim’s lying with her back to her window, scrolling idly on her phone when someone crawls into her bedroom. Her muscles tense, her breathing quickening. Her coin is warm against her thigh in the pocket of her pajamas. 

“It’s me,” Trini whispers. 

Kim relaxes. She sits up, putting her phone aside, and scoots over, patting the mattress beside her. “What’s up?”

Trini doesn’t take the offered seat, lingering awkwardly by the window. “Why weren’t you sleeping?”

“Because someone’s in my room. Why aren’t _you_ sleeping?”

Trini scowls. “This thing you’re doing--were doing--to. Cope, or whatever.” She falls abruptly silent, her scowl intensifying.

Kim rubs at her eyes. She’s not sure she’s up for a q&a session about something she doesn’t fully understand herself. “What about it?”

“Was…” Trini swallows. Her words come out in a rush. “Was what we did part of that?”

“What we,” Kim repeats, confused. Then it clicks. “The kiss,” she clarifies.

Trini nods, jerkily. “And the rest,” she says, without clarification. Kim doesn’t need it anyway, she knows what Trini is talking about. 

“No,” Kim says, after a short pause. “No that was… something else.”

Trini stares at her. 

Kim flushes. “C’mon,” she mutters, “it’s like ass o’clock in the morning.”

Trini steps forward and Kim goes still, pinned in place by Trini’s steady gaze. Trini puts a knee on the bed, the mattress dipping, and slides close and then closer. Kim keeps her eyes open when they kiss, a carefully soft press of chapped lips and the taste of sleep. 

Trini breaks the kiss but stays right there. Her breath smells like toothpaste, like she’d brushed before she’d come over just for this very reason. “I have an idea.”

At this point, Kim would be hard pressed not to do whatever Trini wants, but she nods to show her agreement anyway. Trini settles at her side, pushing the covers down, leaning back against the headboard. Then she hesitates, her hand warm on Kim’s waist. “Um,” she says, and wiggle a little, awkward.

“Oh,” Kim says, realizing what she wants. “I--yeah. Okay.” They shift around, fumbling awkwardly in the dark, both nervous and trying to hide it, until Kim is sitting with her back to Trini’s chest and Trini’s legs on either side of her. “Am I crushing you?”

Trini snorts. Kim smiles, realizing the silliness of her own question, and leans her full weight on Trini, her head tipping back on Trini’s shoulder. “Okay?” Trini’s question is hesitant. 

Kim tips her face up and their second kiss is longer, her eyes slipping shut when their tongues brush. 

“Okay,” Trini says again, and her voice is firmer now. Her fingers tangle with Kim’s, and she brushes a kiss against Kim’s cheek, her jaw, just under her ear. Kim shivers, breath hitching, and Trini says it one more time, a quiet muttered _okay_ that seems more for herself than for Kim. 

Then she bites Kim’s throat, a couple inches below her chaw. A careful press of her teeth and then more and more and she starts to ease up when Kim squeaks, Kim’s hand flying up before she can think about it, gripping the the back of Trini’s head and pulling her back. 

Trini does it two more times, her lips dragging on Kim’s skin, her tongue licking at the mark’s she’s leaving behind. Kim makes a soft noise each time she bites down, low and in her throat and utterly embarrassing. Afterwards, they kiss again, quieting and settling. “Okay,” Trini says, one last time. Then she pokes Kim in the ribs. “C’mon.”

She leads Kim to the mirror, their enhanced eyes sharp enough to make out their reflections in the dim light of the moon slanting through the still open window. Kim tilts her head, looking at her neck: three dark marks in the shape of Trini’s teeth, swollen and purpling. Trini takes Kim’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze, then adjusting it so she’s gripping Kim’s index finger. 

She presses the tip of it against the highest bruise, under her jaw, and then presses harder. The ache focuses, spreading out into dull waves. Kim shivers. “Oh,” she says, understanding. “Oh.”

Trini lets go, but Kim keeps her finger up. She presses against the second one, harder than the first, until the pain goes knife-sharp and her breath catches. She uses two fingers on the third one, even easy pressure that makes the fog in her brain clear away. When she drops her hand Trini is watching her in the mirror. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Trini agrees.

Kim turns. “Stay?”

Trini hesitates, then nods. Kim walks back to the bed, hearing the rustle of Trini shrugging out of her jacket and the gentle thump of her shoes hitting the carpet. She pulls the blankets down, adjusts the pillows, slips between the sheets. Trini’s only a few steps behind, and it’s awkward for a minute, muttering apologies as they bump into each other and find a comfortable position. They end up slightly curled, sharing a pillow, Trini’s head tucked into Kim’s shoulder. First thing they do when they wake up is kiss good morning.

 

Jason pretends not to notice, although he also drops into normal conversation how supportive he’d be of a theoretical relationship between Trini and Kim. Trini rolls her eyes. Kim pats his shoulder for positive reinforcement. Billy and Kim fistbump again. Zack wolf-whistles, then flees Trini’s impending wrath.

Later, he pulls Kim aside. “I,” he says, scratching at the back of his head. “You’ve kind of been having a hard time, haven’t you? Since Rita.”

“It’s… getting better.” Kim touches his arm. “And you’re…” she trails off.

Zack shrugs, avoiding her eyes. “Is what it is. Jason’s always saying that shit like ‘we’re better together’.”

“Together we are more,” Kim corrects.

“Yeah, that.” Zack frowns, eyes unfocusing as he gathers his thoughts. “I feel that, yeah, I feel it when we’re together. But I feel it within myself, too.” He touches his chest, above his heart. “When we morph together, it’s like my mom isn’t dead.”

Kim thinks: Trini tastes like cherry chapstick except when she tastes like mint lipbalm except when she tastes like sweat after a workout except when she tastes like sleep first thing in the morning except when they both taste like hot sauce. “Yeah,” she says. “I get it.”

Zack smiles. “Cool.” He offers her a fistbump. “I hear these are back.”

“Never left,” she says, and they both do the explosion sound effects. 

++

Kim stands on the edge, heels on the ground and toes sticking out into the air. She looks at the drop away beneath her, the yawning stone and the dark dark water. Sways forward to feel the dip in her belly.

Trini steps up to her shoulder. She reaches down and flicks the rubber band around Kim’s left wrist, the snap sting of it on her skin, the way it makes her stomach settle. “Hey.”

They kiss once, light and easy with familiarity. “Hey,” Kim says, and intertwines their fingers.

They jump together, coins held tight in their free hands. When they break the surface they’re wearing their colours.

**Author's Note:**

> so this was partially written like TWO YEARS AGO and then I forgot about it. It was supposed to be longer and involve porn but I don't think that's in the cards so I added like two scenes and called it a day. I hope it doesn't feel too unfinished, but it probably did feel choppy because it is very choppy because more stuff was supposed to go between the scenes. So I apologize for that.
> 
> let me know what you think and I'm on tumblr @ sunspill


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